Prosecutors Aren't Walking Away From Campos - He's Just Not that Important

Earlier today, Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan "delayed" the plea bargain agreement of John Campos after outright calling out the federal prosecutors on the leniency of the agreements.

Kaplan outright asked the prosecutors whether or not they were walking away from prosecuting Campos (and subsequently Elie as well) and they essentially replied that there were risks that Campos and Elie's claim that they received legal advice stating that online poker was legal would cause problems for a jury.

*Cue records scratching noise*

Wait, you mean that one of those last ditch effort motions actually was somewhat legit?

Out of everything that was motioned from the UIGEA being illegal to poker's legal status, it was the supposed "legal opinions" that was the hangup?

The prosecutors claim that they were mainly going after the online companies that duped US banks into processing illegal payments and that Campos came in at the tail end of the conspiracy.

In layman's terms for those that don't speak legal gibberish, they basically said Campos was not really that big a deal to them and that they wanted the other guys.

That is probably a little more accurate than a "problems over the legal opinion" spin that was given to it. Campos, while one of the major players indicted, was really a small fish in comparison to the rest.

The DOJ wanted the major and long standing payment processors as well as the online poker companies themselves. Once they had all the payment processors, Campos was really small potatoes since he really did not significantly profit from the deal like Elie and others did.

Of course, this will be spun like yarn into gold with everyone claiming that prosecutors are backing down and that this proves online poker is legit.

In reality, all this proves is that Campos was really less of a big deal than he was made out to be on paper.

You can now go back to your "I can't believe they banned Daniel" discussions.

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